Whey proteins have previously been shown to participate in
electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions with small molecules.
b-Lactoglobulin has been shown to form hydrophobic interactions
with vitamin D2 (Kontopidis, Holt, & Sawyer, 2004). In addition
studies conducted in this lab have shown whey protein microbeads
to immobilise charged amino acids and peptides by electrostatic
interactions (Egan, 2012). Both electrostatic and hydrophobic
interactions were examined as a potential mechanism for the affinity
between riboflavin and the microbead.